Results: Arma 3

Athough first-person shooters are typically graphics-bound, Arma 3 at 1920x1080, even with Ultra settings enabled, appears quite platform-dependent when we use a GeForce GTX Titan.

The Athlon X4 750K, overclocked to 4.3 GHz across its four cores, cannot catch a stock dual-core Pentium G3258. And yet, it’d be inaccurate to say this game isn’t optimized for more cores. After all, the stock Core i5-4690K, with its 3.5 GHz base clock rate, is notably quicker than Intel’s 20th anniversary Pentium running 1 GHz faster. Intel’s advantage appears to come from the efficiency of its architecture compared to Piledriver.

You do get a speed-up from tuning AMD’s Athlon. But the gains from tweaking Intel’s Pentium are much more pronounced. In fact, they’re significant enough to take the $75 Pentium almost up to Core i3-4330 levels—and that’s a $140 chip.

Frame time variance is greatest on the stock budget-oriented processors, while the Core i3 and i5 prove to be very well-behaved. Then again, we wouldn’t worry about any of these results.

What if "the fool" who bought that Pentium G and Z97 did so expecting to swap the processor in one year or two for a broadwell, once he got the cash? That would make him a very wise fool indeed... I'd say!

Because of course buying a pentium G and fitting it with a 150USD board and 50USD cooler does not make sens by itself ,but you have a 100% future-compatible system that can be upgraded very very easily...

You should overclock your Q9550 to get performance that barely comes close to an ivy-bridge I3 on games and lightly threaded workloads (and it gets stomped by any i5 on any workload)... I personally have an OC'd QX9650 and am not even close. I believe if I change to that Pentium G, and overclock it as well, that would still be an upgrade...

AMD really needs a new model featuring Steamroller cores and a disabled GPU, say, a 770K. It wouldn't change the gaming scores all that much, but various benchmarks would definitely improve. As it is, the G3258 is a nice processor, but it won't go for that $75 to begin with.

What if "the fool" who bought that Pentium G and Z97 did so expecting to swap the processor in one year or two for a broadwell, once he got the cash? That would make him a very wise fool indeed... I'd say!

Because of course buying a pentium G and fitting it with a 150USD board and 50USD cooler does not make sens by itself ,but you have a 100% future-compatible system that can be upgraded very very easily...

Hyperthreading is typically considered to be bad for Chess. It increases inefficiencies in search and although you get a larger kilonodes per second which looks nice as a benchmark score, you are actually lowering the strength of the engine. So when I look at Fritz benchmarks on PC sites I take them with a grain of salt.

You should overclock your Q9550 to get performance that barely comes close to an ivy-bridge I3 on games and lightly threaded workloads (and it gets stomped by any i5 on any workload)... I personally have an OC'd QX9650 and am not even close. I believe if I change to that Pentium G, and overclock it as well, that would still be an upgrade...

So if this happens and intel decide to let even lower mobo chipsets to do o/c only for pentiums it would be nice to pair $60 mobo, $75 CPU and a $25-30 CM 212 EVO or plus, to a total of ~$160 for a o/c ready system.

Smallfilou - I totally agree with you. Some people tend to forget that when you're working on a budget you need to make choices. The smart choice is to get a decent mobo now that Intel has finally provided the right CPU for enthusiasts. I honestly think this is exceptional value for money. A decent mobo is very important in any event. I don't get why anyone would hate on this Pentium...it looks like a gem of a performer when o/c'd.

Having looked, the fool would build a cheap pc with that chip and a z97 board, and the wise man would use the i3 and an h81 board. Similar priced systems..

As you say, the price difference is negligible. The performance difference is also fairly small, and both platforms leave lots of headroom for future upgrades. I am under the impression that any motherboard that can house this new Pentium can also run a blazing-fast i7. The article, unfortunately, doesn't mention that the AMD solution can't even run a FX chip. For someone looking to just get into an inexpensive PC with an eye towards future upgrades, the Intel solution is dramatically more attractive.

Compelling CPU, unfortunately your still stuck with buying a mildly overpriced Z-series board.Now if this CPU had Iris or Iris Pro, then it would be MUCH MUCH more compelling.

Anyway I can see this being a good buy for an enthusiast that isn't quite making it to get an I5 or I7 at their price point but needs a machine performing decently NOW and wants to overclock, he can then upgrade to and I7 or I5 at a later date.

Having looked, the fool would build a cheap pc with that chip and a z97 board, and the wise man would use the i3 and an h81 board. Similar priced systems..

As you say, the price difference is negligible. The performance difference is also fairly small, and both platforms leave lots of headroom for future upgrades. I am under the impression that any motherboard that can house this new Pentium can also run a blazing-fast i7. The article, unfortunately, doesn't mention that the AMD solution can't even run a FX chip. For someone looking to just get into an inexpensive PC with an eye towards future upgrades, the Intel solution is dramatically more attractive.

The point is rather moot as you probably wouldn't upgrade from a Kaveri-based APU to a Piledriver-based CPU, and FX in its current form is dead anyway.

An i7 870 on P55 would be a better buy than a Q9550. 870s dropped below50 UKP on ebay UK this week. Never mind S775, my 870/P55 setup was fasterthan a friend's X58/930 system for gaming (lower latency with P55, and someboards do have x16/x16 CF/SLI).

I would've loved to see an i5-4570 in this review to compare to the 4690k, but I understand that you can only put in so much.

I'd also like to see a review like this with a GPU that a person who buys a G3258 is more likely to buy, to see how much of a difference the higher-priced CPUs would actually make, if any. It'd be nice to find out what the threshold is for the difference.